


holding hands (while the walls come tumbling down)

by Emmar



Category: Final Fantasy X, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2112834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmar/pseuds/Emmar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione Granger steps into the Room of Requirement-- and an entirely new world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fayth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/209478) by [Batsutousai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batsutousai/pseuds/Batsutousai). 



> Whee, obscure crossovers! This is currently slated for weekly updates, though that may change at a later date.
> 
> The idea of Harry being Phoenix's fayth is lovingly borrowed from Fayth by Batsutousai, on whom I am blaming this fic's very existence.
> 
> Beware, this fic is entirely unbeta'd! Enter at your peril, &c, &c.

This, Hermione thinks, is _not_ Hogwarts.  
  
Except, when she staggers to her feet and catches herself on the nearest wall, she realises it _is_. It’s too dark for details, but she knows the shape of this room, these pillars. She knows, deep in her bones, that the starlight she can see isn’t the sky, but the ceiling of the Great Hall. There’s something about the floor, though - it isn’t flat in the centre of the room, but a gently sloping dome. She crosses to it and kneels to lay a hand down, and finds it cool and smooth, like glass or crystal. She follows the edge round, over a handful of deep cracks, until she reaches her starting point again, and then draws in a sharp breath. Because now, her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she can make out the shape inside the crystal, and despite the great feathered wings and sweep of a phoenix tail, she’d know that profile anywhere.  
  
“Oh, _Harry_ ,” she murmurs, laying her palms flat on the crystal over his face and blinking away tears. She wracks her brain for what could possibly have happened, but the last thing she remembers is stumbling into the Room of Requirement, half-awake, to see if there was anything they could do to restore it after the gutting it had been given by Crabbe’s fiendfyre. And now-- now she’s out of her element, out of her _time_ , that much is clear enough, and more than that she’s alone.  
  
Hermione Granger hasn’t been alone since she was twelve, not really.  
  
“Damn you, Harry,” she says, ever so quietly, as she stands and brushes dirt from her knees. “I’ll just bet you did something foolish like sacrifice yourself again, didn’t you?”  
  
There’s no answer, of course, and she didn’t _really_ expect one, but... stranger things have happened. She turns to leave and, as she steps out of the Great Hall, she realises she can hear movement, from the direction of the entrance hall.  
  
“Hello?” she calls out, hand going to her pocket for her wand-- which isn’t there. “Damn,” she says, “ _damn_.”  
“Hey!” calls back a voice, and she picks up her pace when he - it sounds like a he - yelps, but thankfully it sounds startled rather than pained.  
  
She stops short in the doorway, stunned into silence, because she’s seen a lot of things but never anything quite like _this_. The boy is swinging a sword at the creature, but she can see he’s tiring fast, but she can’t _do_ anything - she’s never had the raw power for wandless casting, not like Harry, and she’s not physically strong enough for any other kind of fighting, either. What she _can_ do, though, is throw, and _run_. It’s the work of a moment to find a good sized rock, and her aim is true - it clips the creature in the head and it turns to face her with a hiss, and she can’t keep the ridiculous, reckless, _Gryffindor_ grin off of her face as she dives out of the way of its charge.  
  
“Hey,” yells the boy, darting forward to strike at the creature’s back, “thanks!”  
“Thank me when it’s dead! Concentrate!”  
  
Her hit and run tactics hold up for a few minutes, until the fact that she hasn’t actually slept for almost two days starts to catch up with her, and she stumbles - but that, thankfully, is the moment the main doors explode open from the outside. A part of her cringes at the destruction of such fine architecture, but Hogwarts is so much rubble now anyway, and the newcomers have _grenades_ , of all things, and make quick work of the creature.  
  
“Thank you,” she says, stepping towards them, too skied on adrenaline to so much as twitch when the men bring their odd-looking guns to bear, and holds her hands up in the universal gesture of surrender, kicking the boy gently in the ankle until he does the same.  
  
It doesn’t help.  
  
She wakes on the deck of a ship, and bites back a groan at the nausea that rises in her. Oh, what she’d give for an anti-nausea potion right now.  
  
“You’re awake!”  
  
She sits up and smiles, gently, at the boy. His sword has been confiscated, but he mostly looks confused rather than hurt, which is good. “I am,” she says. “What’s your name?”  
“Tidus,” he says. “How about you? Are you okay?”  
“My name is Hermione. I’m fine. A little nauseous, but fine.”  
“Hermione,” he says, slowly, sounding it out. “That’s kind of a mouthful, huh?”  
“Call me Mia, then,” she says, after a moment’s thought. She’d never been terribly fond of Mione, and Mia had been her grandmother’s nickname for her - it seems fitting, somehow, for this odd place so far into her own future.  
“Mia,” he tries, and grins at her. “I like it. Hey, you got a good arm, you know.”  
  
She opens her mouth to thank him when they’re interrupted - the girl from before, with the grenades, and several gun-toting thugs. Hermione - Mia, she reminds herself - smooths her expression into careful neutrality and listens carefully to the apparent leader as he speaks. It’s no language she recognises, and she has to wonder just how far she’s been flung through time, but then, she and Tidus could communicate perfectly well, so there hadn’t been _that_ much of a language drift--  
  
“He says you can stay if you make yourselves useful!”  
  
She blinks and turns to the girl, and says, “Doing what?”  
“We’re diving! There’re some things down there in the water and we’re trying to get the power running again, see what it is!”  
“ _Cool_ ,” says Tidus. “Hey, can I have my sword back if I do?”  
“Well, _duh_ , there are monsters in the water,” says the girl, and then turns to Mia, looking her up and down with a critical eye. “You a mage?”  
“Yes,” Mia replies, startled, turning the rather archaic term over in her mind. “But I don’t have my wand. I lost it.”  
“A wand? Oh, your focus! Well, we’ve got some stuff lying around, I think, maybe there’s something you can use!”  
  
She casts a glance out at the deep, dark ocean and says, “Even so, I don’t think I’ll be much help to you underwater.”  
“ _Well_ ,” says the girl, tapping a finger against her bottom lip, “do you know any white magic? Because, you know, that’d be super helpful for when we get back, probably! Or, you know, you can carry stuff for us?”  
“That,” she says, with a smile, “I can probably manage.”  
  
Oh, but it is a shame she doesn’t have her beaded bag here. Still, it’s just another item on the long list of things she wishes she had and doesn’t, so there’s no sense whining about it.  
  
When the others bring out Tidus’ sword, they bring with them a collection of what look like staves, and Mia picks one up and frowns. It’s… there’s magic in it, to be sure, but it doesn’t feel _right_ the way her wand did. This is a new world, though, she reasons, and perhaps wandlore on Ollivander's level has been lost to the mists of time. Still, this one isn’t for her.  
  
“Are all magic focuses so… large?” she asks the girl, as she picks through the pile to find something that suits.  
“Well, we Al Bhed don’t have a whole buncha mages, so I wouldn’t really know, but I think so? I mean, you know, summoners always have staffs, I guess! Uh, why d’you ask?”  
“It’s just-- my wand was much, _much_ smaller,” she says, holding her hands apart to demonstrate.  
“ _Wow_ ,” says the girl, “I’ve never heard of someone having a focus that tiny!”  
  
Yes, she’d been afraid of that. So however far in the future she is, it’s far enough that wands aren’t even myth and legend any more. And all of these staves look so _unwieldy_ , so awkwardly large.  
  
“Hey,” says Tidus, beside her, and she startles and then graces him with a smile. “You wanna hand?”  
“If you don’t mind. I don’t know what exactly I’m looking for, except something, well… smaller.”  
“Two heads are better than one, right?”  
“Thank you, Tidus,” she murmurs, and he favours her with a bright smile and digs in, and after a moment, she looks up at his triumphant cry.  
  
“How about this?” he offers, holding out a rather plain looking staff, perhaps as long as her leg, with only a small decoration at one end, a large gem or crystal set in the wood. She takes it from him and smiles at the tingle of magic through her veins. Yes, she thinks, this is more like it.  
  
“Brilliant,” she tells him, turning it over in her hands, twirling it and flicking it as she tries to find the best grip. Whether she’s going to be casting any magic with it is another question entirely, of course, but you won’t know unless you try, she tells herself. She thinks hard on _Lumos_ , remembers her lessons on silent spellcasting, and swishes the end of the staff in a gentle arc upwards - it’s a little large to flick, after all. The gem in the end glows, gently, much more gently than her wand ever did, and there’s a _pull_ on her magic unlike any she’s ever felt. She doesn’t realise she’s stumbled until Tidus catches her by the shoulder.  
  
“So,” he says, concern in his eyes, “it worked?”  
“It worked,” she says, and doesn’t say, _for a given value of success_. She’s going to have to learn the native magic as soon as she can, and hope like hell it doesn’t take as much out of her as that simple first year spell just did.  
  
“Wow! I’ve never seen a spell like that before!” says the girl, bouncing on her toes and clapping her hands like a much younger child, and Mia can’t help but smile.  
“The first one I ever learnt,” she admits. “In any case, I should be of some use to you, even if it _is_ just carrying things. I don’t suppose,” she adds, well aware of the wistful tone of her voice, “you have any books on magic? Or even your language?”  
“Well, we might have some Al Bhed primers lying around I can find once we’re back up! I’m Rikku, by the way!”  
“Mia,” she says, “and this is Tidus.”  
“Alright! You ready? Let’s get going!”  
  
Rikku hands the two of them odd little breather apparatuses as they prepare to dive, and when they do-- the water is _odd_. It takes Mia until they finish their first battle, Tidus and Rikku cutting down overlarge piranhas with ease, that she realises the water almost entirely lacks the sort of resistance she’s used to. It certainly makes things easier, fighting in the depths like this, but it’s just one more sign of just how far away from home she really is. There’s no time to dwell on it, she reminds herself firmly, tossing the others potions as they fight and slam about on ancient machinery.  
  
By the time they’re back on the ship she’s wet and tired and she drifts off without trouble to the quiet murmur of Tidus and Rikku’s voices. She comes to again to a clang, and blinks her eyes open to see Tidus with his head against the railing, fists clenched.  
  
“Tidus?” she calls, quiet, and he turns to face her, scrubbing at his eyes hurriedly. “Are you alright?”  
“She said,” he starts, and has to begin again when his voice breaks, “she said Zanarkand was destroyed a _thousand_ years ago.”  
“Oh, _Tidus_ ,” she says, and scrambles to her feet to turn him towards her and draw him into her arms. “I understand.”  
“ _Do_ you?”  
“My home-- that ruin, where we met? That was my home.”  
“...I’m sorry.”  
“So am I.”  
  
  
And then there is Sin, and the sea, and only darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Mia looks down at her list, written over the past four days, and carefully crosses out the fourth item - _learn native magic_ \- and contemplates the remainder. The list is seven items long, the first four of which now have a neat line through them: _acquire local clothing, find lodgings, investigate fayth, learn native magic, learn al bhed, find tidus and rikku_ , and _find way home (?)_.   
  
The third item had been one of the easiest, rather worryingly - after a day of convalescence and a deduction that she had encountered ‘Sin’s Toxin,’ the locals had shown her the temple and explained to her summoners, and fayth, and Sin, and then that evening she’d snuck into the temple ( _distressingly_ easily) and solved the silly little sphere puzzle and slinked into the chamber of fayth. She’d stared hard down at the crystal and noted the similarities to Harry’s, and then reached out with her awkward, fledgling legilimency, and someone had _answered_.   
  
“Summoner,” the young woman had said, floating over the crystal, and Mia blinked.  
“Well, no,” she’d said.  
“Not yet,” the spirit replied. “You have questions. Ask.”  
“How are you-- how did--”  
“We chose. To sacrifice our bodies to defeat Sin.”  
“Did you know-- Harry? His crystal looked like a phoenix.”  
“We spoke. He was one of the first.”  
“I thought he might have been, somehow.”  
“You are a contemporary? Yes, I can see that you are. I will grant you my power, Summoner, and perhaps you will break the cycle.”   
  
Seconds later, there was another presence in her mind, slipping past her occlumency shields without pause, one that whispered, _Oh, this is different. I’ve never seen a mind like this before_ , and Mia had laughed quietly and thought back, _Enjoy the library, Valefor_.   
  
Now, she sets her list on fire with a whisper of power, getting used to the pull on her magic, and brushes the ashes ever so gently off of her trousers - leather, sturdy and hand-stitched and surprisingly comfortable. The crusader at the entrance gives her a smile as she passes, out into the village, and she takes a moment to bask in the sunlight, so rare before but so plentiful here. She turns towards the entrance to the village, and then--   
  
“Oh my god, _Tidus_!”   
  
The poor boy barely turns to face her before he has a faceful of dark bushy hair, and then she pulls back and puts her hands on either side of his face and looks him over carefully, taking in the scrapes and bruises and the tired relief in his eyes. And then she rounds on Wakka (because of _course_ he’s with Wakka) and demands, “What on earth have you been doing?”   
  
And Wakka stutters and mumbles something about finding him on the beach and bringing him to the village and how he got too close to Sin, and she sighs and presses her lips together in a way that she knows probably makes her look more than a little like Professor McGonagall. The problem with Wakka, she thinks, is that he’s like Ron, irresponsible and reckless, but like Ron was at eleven or twelve, rather than like Ron is now at seventeen ( _was_ , at seventeen), and she has a lot less patience now than she did when she was a twelve-year-old girl who’d never had a friend. So she takes Tidus by the elbow and leaves Wakka to his stumbling excuses, leading him to a quiet and shady corner of the village and sits him down on a log.   
  
“Stay still,” she murmurs, reaching down into her magic and then letting it wash over his skin, watching as the scrapes scab over and disappear and the bruises cycle from red through blue, purple, green and settle on a yellowish-brown, and Tidus stares at her with wide eyes.   
  
“So,” he says after a moment, “you figured out magic here, huh?”  
“Yes,” she says, with a quiet laugh, “yeah, I did. _God_ , I’m so glad you’re okay.”  
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” he admits, and leans forward, arms open and hesitation written all over his face, though he probably doesn’t realise it - she’s something of an expert on teenage boys, after all. She draws him into another hug, a proper one, this time, props her chin on his shoulder and says nothing about the way he sags in her arms, all the tension gone out of him.   
  
“You’re late,” she murmurs eventually. “I’ve been here for four days already.”  
“Sorry,” he mumbles into her hair, and she squeezes him tighter before she lets go entirely.  
“Right. First things first, there are things you need to know if you’re going to keep your foot out of your mouth.”  
“Uh,” he says, and she smiles and settles into what her boys always used to call ‘lecture mode,’ and tells Tidus everything she knows about this new world they’ve stumbled into.   
  
“So, wait,” he says, minutes or perhaps as long as an hour later, when she’s finished, “are you a summoner now?”  
“Yes,” she says, “but nobody knows. It wasn’t exactly above-board, you know. But I am going to the other temples, I think.”   
  
Tidus narrows his eyes at her for a moment, and then says, “I guess you’d need a guardian, wouldn’t you?” and she rewards him with a bright smile.  
  
“You’re a treasure,” she murmurs, and then gets to her feet carefully, stretching her legs after having sat for so long. She’s never been especially active, but this last year, oh so many years ago now, has made it so she gets almost restless if she has to stay still for too long. Besaid is perfect for that, she has to admit - it’s a small village, to be sure, but there’s never a lack of things to be doing, and she’s so, so grateful. “And,” she adds, looking Tidus over critically, “you need some new clothes.”   
  
“It’s my blitzball kit!” he squawks in protest, and she can’t help but laugh.  
“Yes,” she says, “but it’s machined, isn’t it? Tidus, they don’t _have_ that sort of technology here.”  
“But,” he mumbles, picking at one of the straps over his knee, and she sighs gently and puts a hand on his wrist.  
“I know; It’s all you have of home. I cried for an hour when I changed out of my old clothes,” she confides, and he looks up at her from under his eyelashes. “Really. But you’re not alone here, I promise. We might not be from the same place, but I _understand_.”  
“Yeah,” he murmurs, “I guess you do.”  
“Good,” she says, forcing cheer into her voice. “Now come on, there ought to be something lying around the crusader’s lodge that will fit you, and you can have some lunch and a nap, too.”  
“I’m not a little kid!” he protests, but he follows her anyway.   
  
It’s late afternoon when she wakes him, and he watches her for a long moment before a smile spreads across his face.   
  
“I was worried,” he admits, “that this morning was just a dream.”  
“You’re stuck with me,” she says, and leads him outside, just in time to watch Yuna summon Valefor. Tidus’ expression is awed, and he shoots her a look. “Oh yes,” she murmurs, leaning close, “I can summon her, too. Impressive, isn’t she?”   
  
The fayth in her mind positively _preens_.   
  
“That’s the Lady Yuna; we’ll be travelling some of the way with her, I hope.”  
“You hope?”  
“Wakka told you about the blitzball tournament in Luca, didn’t he?”  
“Well, yeah, but now I’ve found _you_ \--”  
“But you ran your mouth about Zanarkand first, right?”   
  
Tidus looks down at the ground, shamefaced, and nods. “He thinks I got too close to Sin’s toxin.”  
“They think the same about me,” she tells him, “so we’ll both go to Luca under the pretense of finding familiar faces, okay?”  
“Yeah, okay.”  
“I’ll have to tell them about my being a summoner at some point, but I’d rather do it on the road; I’ve no interest in fame and frankly, I’d rather people think I’m just one of her guardians.” At Tidus’ look, she smiles and adds, “My best friend growing up was famous for something his mother had done as a child, and he _hated_ it. And...”  
“And what?” Tidus asks, when she trails off.  
“And, sometime during those years I lost, he agreed to become a fayth.”  
“I’m sorry, Mia.”  
“No,” she says brightly, blinking away tears and giving him a smile, “it’s alright. I’m not even surprised, really, it’s just like him to have done it. Now, you sit here and eat, I’ll be right back.”   
  
She can feel his gaze on her back as she crosses the village, making a beeline for Yuna and ignoring the still-hostile stares of some of the older villagers.   
  
“Lady Yuna,” she says, and Yuna looks up with such an open, honest face that Mia can’t help but be reminded of Harry.  
“Mia! Please, sit. Was there something you needed?”  
“I wanted to ask, my lady, if Tidus and I could possibly accompany you on your pilgrimage?”  
“Tidus… The boy Wakka found on the beach?”  
“The very same. Both of us have been exposed to Sin’s toxin, and we were hoping we could find friends in Luca - Tidus is a blitzball player, you see.”  
“Of course,” says Yuna, reaching over and laying a hand on Mia’s wrist. “Of course you can. And if you don’t find anyone, you’re welcome to stay with us.”  
“Thank you, Lady Yuna,” Mia murmurs, getting to her feet with a smile. That’s one thing less to worry about, at least.   
  
They leave for Kilika in the morning, a motley group to be sure; an even mix of might and magic, though Yuna is much more suited for support. As they walk, Mia drops back until she’s beside Yuna, the others just out of earshot ahead.   
  
“Yuna,” she says, “there’s something I need to tell you.”  
“Yes?”  
“I… I am a summoner.”   
  
The way Yuna’s face lights up is almost painful to see, the sheer joy in her eyes at the thought of it.   
  
“ _But_ ,” she adds hastily, “I’d like to keep it quiet. The others will have to know, of course, but when it comes to the public, I’d prefer it if I just seemed like another one of your guardians.”  
“Of course!” says Yuna, smiling brightly. “It’s wonderful to hear that you are also a summoner, and of course, pretending to be my guardian will certainly make life easier at temples, won’t it? If we don’t have to face the trials separately.”  
“My thoughts exactly.”  
“Then that is what we shall do. I will tell the others when we reach Kilika Temple - if that’s alright with you? Perhaps-- even a little later. I think… I think it will do Wakka good to realise that he doesn’t know everything.”  
“Sounds perfect.”   
  
From up ahead, Wakka calls back, “Hey, what are you two gossipping about?” and seems terribly, terribly confused when the two of them burst out laughing.   
  
When they finally reach the beach, Mia and Tidus step onto the boat first, whilst Yuna collects well-wishes and gifts from the villagers, and Tidus murmurs, “Hey, so what _were_ you and Yuna gossipping about, anyway?”  
“Girls’ secret,” she informs him loftily, and grins when he pulls a face at her. “You’ll find out in Kilika.”   
  
The boat ride itself is calm, pleasant - until Sin.   
  
“I am getting very tired of that,” Mia mutters, casting thunder spell after thunder spell at the fin, and Tidus laughs, sharp and edging on hysteria, as he cuts down the scales that come and come and come.   
  
The sight of Kilika in the setting sun is horrific, but only Tidus seems particularly shocked. Mia lays a gentle hand on his shoulder as he grips the railing, and thinks that she has seen scenes like this too often to be shocked, any more. Like Voldemort had seemed, Sin is an inescapable, unstoppable force of nature - but there has to be a way. There’s _always_ , she thinks, a way.  
  
It just needs finding.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops i forgot about this thing for a while sorry. there's another chapter written after this, but when/if any more happens is up in the air (although the chapter after that is half-written, but i'm struggling with it.) beta'd by the lovely batsutousai!

The sending, Mia thinks, is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.

The most beautiful, and the most horrifying.

She says as much to Tidus, under her breath, as they make for the inn, and he nods, wordless.

They have only two rooms between the six of them, and Mia takes one look at Lulu and Yuna and says, “I’ll take the floor.”

Yuna makes to protest but Mia waves her off, smiling gently, and tells her, “No, really, it’s fine. I’ve slept on worse,” thinking ever so briefly of the cold marble floor of the Malfoy Manor ballroom.  
“If you’re sure,” says Yuna, frowning.  
“I am. You’ll be roughing it from Luca onwards, you know, so you might as well make the most of it now.”  
“Used to roughing it, are you?” asks Lulu, eyebrows raised.  
“Honestly, those four days in Besaid have made me a little soft,” she admits, and Lulu chuckles. “I-- my memory is still a little fuzzy,” she hedges, because it’s as good an excuse as any to keep them from thinking her as mad as they do Tidus, “but I know I’ve spent a lot of the last year running.”  
“From what?” asks Yuna, hands clasped in front of her, expression earnest and empathetic.  
“Something a lot like Sin.”

Mia wakes early enough that even Kimahri is still sleeping, when she looks in on the boys. She’s too used to waking before sunrise to let go of the habit by now, and she wants to really get a look at Kilika before they head for the temple; it would be a beautiful village if it were whole, she thinks. She settles herself near the edge of the village, legs dangling over the shallow water, and waits for the others, soaking up the early morning sun while she has the chance. Yuna arrives first, Kimahri her ever-present shadow, and Lulu not far behind.

“Where are the boys?” Mia asks, leaning back on her elbows.  
“Wakka wanted to speak with Tidus and the rest of the team,” Lulu tells her, and Mia presses her lips together and huffs. _Blitzball_ , why is she not surprised. She can understand why people cling to it so hard, but to her it just seems so… _silly_.

They turn up soon enough, though, and the forests of Kilika turn out to be just as dangerous as the rocky paths of Besaid, if not more so. They’re strangely beautiful, though the wildlife leaves much to be desired. Lord Ochu they avoid entirely, taking a much longer route than they’d need to otherwise, and then, of course, there is something ugly waiting for them on the steps. _Of course_ there is. By the time they take the thing down, Mia is shaking from the magic drain and she has to lean on Tidus as they make their way up the final set of steps to the temple proper.

Frankly, the only thing that stops her from punching one of the Luca Goers is the fact that she doesn’t think she can lift her arms. But otherwise, oh, she would. She can’t even muster the energy to mutter disparagingly under her breath. At least, she thinks, the fact that Tidus is propping her up stops him running his mouth at them.

Inside the temple, he sets her down on the floor with her back to the edge of Ohalland’s statue and dashes off to-- she has no idea, actually, but he returns a moment later and presents her with a potion vial with a flourish. She smiles tiredly up at him as she knocks it back, and lets the ether restore her.

“I’m surprised you restrained the urge to say ‘ta-dah,’” she murmurs as she gets to her feet, and he sniggers.  
“It was tough.”  
“I don’t doubt it. Are you going to pray?”

Tidus looks at the statue long and hard, then at Wakka, and shakes his head. “Whether we win or not isn’t going to change,” he says to her quietly, shrugging one shoulder.  
“How can you be so sure?” she teases, and he pulls a face.

They turn back to the main group just as a tall, dark woman (Mia overhears one of the priests refer to her as Lady Dona), accompanied by an even taller muscle-bound man, says to Yuna, “And all these _people_ are your guardians?”

Before anybody else can speak, Mia says, thoughtful, “Three isn’t _that_ many, is it?”

Dona gives her a poisonous look and says, “I count five.”  
“Well, there’s your main flaw, you see; I’m not her guardian. Neither is he,” she adds, pointing her thumb at Tidus. “We’re just along for the ride.”

There’s no comeback for that, and it’s obvious by the way Dona sniffs haughtily and orders her hulking great brute to precede her out of the temple.

“Honestly,” Mia mutters as the six of them make their way into the cloister, “it’s not like it’s a _competition_.”  
“Hey,” Wakka says, at the top of the lift, “guardians only. You two wait here.”

They wait precisely as long as it takes for the lift to come back up, and step onto it just as Dona and Bartello reappear.

“I thought you said you weren’t guardians,” says Dona, eyes narrowed.  
“We’re not,” Mia tells her cheerfully, as the lift begins to descend, and then turns to Tidus. “Think they were trying to get us in trouble?”  
“Definitely,” mutters Tidus.  
“I do love to put a spoke in peoples’ wheels like that.”  
“What?”  
“Old idiom,” she says, “don’t mind me.”

They walk straight through the cloister and into the room where the others are waiting, and Wakka, predictably, squawks out a protest which Mia ignores entirely. Yuna emerges moments later and gives Mia a nod, at which she ducks past and into the chamber under the sharp edge of the door.

“Hey!” says Wakka. “It’s forbidden--!”  
“Then it’s a good thing I’m a summoner,” she throws over her shoulder, and as the door closes behind her, she can hear Tidus begin to laugh.

She folds herself cross-legged on the floor of the chamber, her knees against the gentle rise of the fayth crystal, and opens her mind. This fayth is older, a man in some sort of uniform, and he does not smile.

“Welcome, Summoner,” he says. “You have come for the aeon.”  
“I have.”  
“You are going to break the cycle?”  
“If I can.”  
“Then I will lend you my power.”  
“Thank you,” she murmurs, and then from within her mind there is an exclamation of surprise, and she laughs aloud, and thinks, _Valefor was the same_. She gets an indistinct grumbling in response, and Valefor’s quiet amusement.

All in all, she’s in and out of the chamber of fayth in less than five minutes, and the others look stunned as she rejoins them.

“That was… quick, ya?” says Wakka, and Mia just smiles at him.  
“So,” Tidus says, slowly, “you got another one?”  
“Mm,” she says shortly, and he gives her a thumbs up. “Back to the village and then--”  
“Luca, right?”  
“Right,” says Yuna, firmly. “And after the tournament, we travel the Mi’ihen Highroad to the temple at Djose.”

As they walk back down the steps towards the jungle, Tidus says, “Hey, do you think--”  
“No,” Mia says, and ignores his noise of protest.  
“You didn’t even let me finish!”  
“My answer’s probably still going to be no.”  
“I was _thinking_ ,” he says, pointedly, and she smiles and waves a hand for him to go on, “that now you and Yuna have another aeon, maybe we could take on that Lord Ochu thing the crusaders were worried about!”  
“Tidus,” she says, “if a squadron of crusaders can’t take it down--”  
“No,” says Yuna, slow and thoughtful, “I think, with Ifrit, we may have a chance.”  
“Yuna,” Lulu says, chiding, but there really is no saying no to a face like that. Tidus turns the puppy eyes on Mia, and she huffs and throws her hands in the air.  
“Fine,” she says, “fine. We’ll take on the Ochu, and if it crushes us into paste, it’ll be _your fault_.”  
“God,” mutters Tidus, rolling his eyes, “yes, mom.”

Yuna laughs, bright and joyful, and the decision is made: They’re going to take on Lord Ochu.

It’s easier than expected, if a slog; Yuna summons Ifrit and Mia Valefor, whilst Lulu provides magical backup and Tidus, Wakka and Kimahri physical. The poison is-- more of an irritant than anything, to be honest. “Don’t waste antidotes,” Lulu calls to Tidus, “we’ll cure ourselves when we’re done.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“We’ll only be struck again, otherwise.”  
“Alright,” he murmurs, though it doesn’t sit well.

When the great creature finally dissolves into a cloud of pyreflies, Yuna and Mia slump back-to-back, aeons dismissed. “I’ll take that antidote now,” Mia murmurs.  
“I think I’m going to be sick,” says Yuna.  
“Yeah,” Tidus says, handing each of them a vial, “let’s not do that again anytime soon.”  
“I’m certainly not planning on it,” Lulu tells him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic does still exist, i promise! i'm playing through the game again at the moment, actually, so hopefully the next chapter will _finally_ get finished. (long, boring stretches of field area filled with nothing but random battles are really hard to write, okay?)

Yuna is held up getting on the boat yet again, gifts pressed on her by thankful villagers, but the trip to Luca itself is thankfully uneventful. Mia sits on the upper deck, legs hanging over the side, and looks down on Tidus and Yuna, huddled together and speaking of their fathers, and smiles sadly. It reminds her of home, of Hogwarts, history repeating generation after generation, and she knows that Jecht and Braska’s story is somehow just as sad as the Marauders’.

Luca is a bustling metropolis unlike any she’s seen in Spira so far, and it’s _beautiful_. Crowded and over-warm and loud, but beautiful. The buildings are stone, two or three stories, and the docks are right beside the stadium, and the atmosphere is so like the Quidditch World Cup had been that she finds herself buoyed by it. Blitzball doesn’t appeal to her at all, but she knows she’s going to go and spectate, the same way she always did for Harry, because Tidus is something close to family now, and that means something, here, where all either of them have are each other.

Before that, though, they have to _get_ to the stadium, and there’s no getting anywhere without detours, apparently. Mika unnerves her for reasons she can’t quite put her finger on, and Seymour-- well. Seymour makes her skin crawl from the moment he opens his mouth. His oily manner sets her nerves on edge, and she keeps her gaze fixed on a point just past his left shoulder as he speaks to Yuna.

“What a creep,” Tidus says to her, quietly, and she shudders and nods.

The Aurochs’ first game is against the Al Bhed Psyches, and the team are ecstatic to have been seeded, only two games for the trophy.

“Do you think they can do it?” she asks him, under her breath, as they make their way through the city, looking for the mysterious Sir Auron, who Mia gathers is dear to both Yuna and Tidus - if he’s the same person, which isn’t guaranteed, though it seems likely to her; surely whatever brought Tidus to Spira in this time brought Auron with him.  
“I dunno,” he admits. “Maybe.”

Watching Kimahri get into what can only be described as a brawl is bizarre; the ronso has always seemed so calm to her, and to see him duking it out with two others almost twice his size is startling. She’s rather glad when the barman tells them to take it outside, that the game is starting.

Of course, that’s when they realise Yuna’s missing; Lulu meets them in the square, laying out the situation, and Mia and Tidus share a glance, unspoken resolve: They are absolutely not going to let the Al Bhed Psyches ruin this. Mia might not particularly _like_ Wakka, but she doesn’t want him to throw his last ever blitzball game.

She holds that opinion for about as long as it takes for Lulu to tell her, surrounded by the remains of a great machina, to keep Yuna’s lineage a secret, that Wakka ‘doesn’t have much love’ for the Al Bhed. She can feel her expression close down, but waves off Tidus’ concern, and instead kneels down to pick through the scrap. “It’s nothing,” she says, eyes firmly fixed on the deck. “Some bad memories is all. Now come on, you have a game to win, don’t you?”

Yuna looks at her oddly, but says nothing as they rush back to the stadium. She stays in the locker room long enough to hear Wakka begin decrying the Al Bhed, and then leaves without a word; _heathen_ sounds an awful lot like _mudblood_ , to her ears, and she’s had enough of that sort of attitude for a lifetime. Tidus pokes his head out a moment later, frowning, and says, “Hey.”  
“Hey,” she murmurs, mustering up a smile. “You up?”  
“Yeah. Wish me luck?”  
“Break a leg,” she says quietly, and can’t help a quiet, tired laugh at his confused expression. “Go. Shows those Goers what’s what.”  
“Yes ma’am,” he says, throwing her a salute, and ducks back into the locker room.

He’s good, there’s no denying that. Her mind, of course, can’t keep from making comparisons to quidditch, but all in all blitzball is very similar, if rather slower. Less dangerous, too, with the only real risk of injury being from other players’ overzealous tackles. The rules look fairly simple, easy for spectators to understand, and she finds herself on her feet, cheering, when Tidus pulls off that shot he’d perfected on the boat, knocking out two of the Goers and planting the ball squarely in the left corner of the goal. When the crowd starts calling for Wakka she manages a small smile; it would be good, she thinks, for his last game to be a championship win, especially against a team as unnecessarily nasty as the Luca Goers.

The monsters are an unfortunate and mostly irritating end to events, and she grabs Yuna by the sleeve as the younger summoner stands, staff in hand.

“Outside,” she commands, and when Yuna looks to protest, she shakes her head. “There’s no room to summon here, and we need to get out so we can find the boys.”

They take out their own fair share of fiends as they make their way out of the stadium, Mia and Lulu striking them down from a distance before they can get close enough to be in reach of Kimahri’s spear.

Then the aeon is summoned, crying blood and screaming, and Mia thinks she might be sick. She doesn’t want to speak with a fayth who produces an aeon like _that_ \- but she wants to end the cycle. She promised Valefor, and Ifrit, and while she never wants to meet this aeon’s fayth, she wants to end its suffering.

“She’s in so much pain,” Yuna whispers, and Mia nods, throat tight, and leads her gently out into the city proper.

They wait near the entrance to the Highroad, where the paving stones of Luca give way to a dirt track and grass, and Wakka appears not long after.

“Where’s Tidus?” she demands, and he shrugs, awkward and shrinking under her ire.  
“We found Sir Auron, and then he dragged the kid off for a talk about somethin’, ya?”

Mia presses her lips together and huffs quietly and settles in to wait.

The legendary Sir Auron is rather hard to miss, she has to admit, and with him he’s dragging Tidus, thank god.

“ _There_ you are,” she says, rushing forward to gather him in a hug, and then lets her healing magic take care of his scrapes and bruises the same way she had on Besaid, half an ear turned to the conversation.

“This one, I promised Jecht,” Auron says.  
“Actually,” Mia says, turning to face him, “Tidus is _my_ guardian.”

He raises one dark eyebrow at that, and she smiles at him pleasantly. Must not get people standing up to him very often, she thinks.

“We do plan on travelling together, don’t worry. I’m pretending to be a guardian.”

Auron just hums, quiet and thoughtful, and says, “Very well.”

She studies him from under her eyelashes as they let Tidus and Yuna speak, and thinks that he must have been very lucky indeed to get a scar like that and live through it. Despite the fact that they look nothing alike, she finds herself inexplicably reminded of Remus Lupin, and drawn to him just the same way. They’re similar in a lot of ways already, she thinks: Friend of a father, aging poorly, quietly amused and exasperated in equal measure - though Auron is more the latter than the former. And… it will be nice to talk to someone who doesn’t think Tidus is mad. Nice to talk to someone he respects, and find out why.

She turns back to watch Yuna and Tidus, then, and she finds herself smiling at their loud, fake laughter. Sometimes, she knows, you have to make yourself laugh until it’s real, to keep from crying. And when they dissolve into real, honest laughter, more so at Wakka and Lulu’s confused expressions, she thinks, _good_. It’s good for Tidus to make friends, and good for Yuna too, she thinks. Yuna probably hasn’t had terribly many friends her own age before.

“If we’re ready,” says Auron reprovingly, but she thinks there might be a hint of amusement underneath.  
“Of course,” says Yuna, smiling brightly.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Auron murmurs, and Wakka puffs up, proud.  
“Yeah,” he says. “Almost ruined by those damn Al Bhed, though. Heathens, think they can get away with anything--”  
“Lady Yuna,” Mia interrupts, and she knows her icy tone must shock them, “I would be greatly obliged if you would muzzle your dog.”

With that, she turns sharply on her heel and starts up the highroad, Tidus at her heels, confused and concerned, and neither of them notice the expression of startled amusement that Auron hides behind his cowl.


End file.
